Mick Unplugged - Dre Baldwin | Building Success: Baldwin's Secrets to Achieving 10x Results in Business and Life

Episode Date: October 10, 2024

Welcome back to another insightful episode of *Mick Unplugged*! In today's show, we're diving deep into the fascinating journey of Dre Baldwin, renowned former professional basketball player turned entrepreneurial powerhouse. Alongside hosts Dre Baldwin and Mick Hunt, we explore how Dre kicked off his parallel career in the digital space while playing basketball internationally, transforming his passion into a thriving business. We'll uncover Dre's initial steps into content creation on YouTube, selling $5 basketball training programs, and eventually shifting gears towards motivational content that resonates beyond the court. From self-publishing books to his innovative "roadmap in reverse" framework, Dre's story is a blueprint for aspiring entrepreneurs. Our discussion touches on the hustle culture, highlighting the crucial blend of hard work, strategy, and execution necessary for sustained success. Mick and Dre dissect the balance between talent and effort, the power of focusing on outcomes, and practical advice for entrepreneurs looking to maximize their impact. Tune in for an enriching conversation filled with real-life anecdotes, strategic insights, and a motivational push to strive for greatness. Stick around to hear how Dre's journey can inspire your path to personal and professional growth. Let's get started! Takeaways: ·       Starting late in basketball didn't deter Dre; he found his path through hard work. ·       Consistency in content creation has led to Dre's massive audience engagement. ·       Hustle is important, but strategy is essential for sustainable success. ·       Understanding the 80-20 principle can help entrepreneurs focus on impactful actions. ·       Plans may change, but the process of planning is invaluable. ·       Focusing on outcomes rather than outputs leads to better results.   Questions & Answers: 1.         Question: Mick Hunt: "Dre, how have you maintained motivation and consistency since 2005, creating around 30,000 pieces of content?" Answer: Dre Baldwin: "Consistency is about showing up every day. Over Dre, it's the cumulative effort that counts, not any single viral piece. This approach built my audience and kept athletes returning for advice, eventually expanding my coaching business." 2. Question: Mick Hunt: "Can you explain your 'roadmap in reverse' framework?" Answer: Dre Baldwin: "Start with the end goal and work backwards to identify necessary steps. This method helped me secure a basketball career and later, plan my business ventures by breaking down large goals into manageable actions."   3. Question: Mick Hunt: "How do you balance hustle with strategy for long-term success?" Answer: Dre Baldwin: "Hustle gets you started, but strategy sustains you. I hustled early on, but scaling required studying the market and refining my approach. Combining hard work with smart planning allowed me to effectively grow my business." Sound Bites ·       "His content has been consumed over 103 million Drees." ·       "I started selling $5 training programs." ·       "Hard work is an element of success, not the key."   Connect and DiscoverLinkedIn:  linkedin.com/in/dreallday Instagram:  Instagram.com/drebaldwin Facebook:  facebook.com/DreBaldwin Website:  https://www.drebaldwin.com/dre-dreallday-baldwin                  https://www.workonyourgameuniversity.com/ Podcast:  Work On Your GameSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I followed his little experiment and I started selling $5 training programs to basketball players who were following me on YouTube. So I basically went through his experiment and I found market viability. I started doing it a little bit more consistently. And by about 2009, I had a nice little audience. I started selling them again, $4.99 a piece. And that's when I officially became an entrepreneur. One of your frameworks that I love is called Roadmap in Reverse. Can you explain for the viewers and

listeners a little bit about... So Roadmap in Reverse is basically deconstructing your plan, your process from the goal that you want to reach back to where we are today. And the question that you can use in that process, and anyone can use this right now, is just think about your outcome, the goal that you want to achieve in any aspect of your life, and ask yourself, for this to occur, what would have to be true? The players who are watching me on YouTube started asking me questions about mindset. The reason was because they start to find out a little bit about this background that I just shared. Like you only played one year of high school and you scored two points a game and then you walked on to play college ball and then you went and hustled your way into playing pro ball

and here you are in an empty gym in Miami practicing every day because the phone's not ringing yet. You keep going. Welcome to Mick Unplugged, where we ignite potential and fuel purpose. Get ready for raw insights, bold moves and game changing conversations. Buckle up. Here's Mick. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another exciting episode of Make Unplugged. And today we have an extraordinary guest who's a former professional basketball player and CEO and founder of Work On Your Game Incorporated. With four TED Talks and 35 books to his name, his content has been consumed over 103 million times. I'm going to say that again. His content has been consumed over 103 million times. His daily work on your game masterclass has close to 3,000 episodes and 7.3 million listeners. Please help me in welcoming the dynamic, the motivational, the insightful, my main man,

Mr. Dre Baldwin. Dre, how are you doing today, brother? Excellent, Mick, and hopefully I can live up to that introduction. Thank you. Hey, you already have, and that's why you deserved it, man. That's why you deserved it. I appreciate it. One, truly honored to have you on. I know you're a very busy individual, and you have so much going on, so much good that you are giving to the world. And so, again, humbled and honored to have you on the show, brother. I'm excited to be here. Looking forward to this conversation. Yes, sir. Yes, sir.

So let's talk about it, man. I know most of my listeners and viewers know who Dre Baldwin is, so it's not like I need to say, hey, go Google Dre and find out about him. But why don't we talk about your journey, man, from youth to professional basketball career to now the work that you're doing with Work On Your Game, Inc., man. So how did the journey of Dre begin? Sure. I'm not sure how many of your guests already know me, but maybe a few of them do. But I'll give you the three- to five-minute version.

So I come from the city of Philadelphia, PA, now based in South Florida. I always played sports growing up. Got around to basketball pretty late, around age 14, which is late, meaning if you're trying to play college ball or play pro ball, 14 is pretty late to start. So it wasn't really good when I began. Didn't make my high school team until my senior year. meaning if you're trying to play college ball or play pro ball, 14 is pretty late to start. So it wasn't really good when I began. Didn't make my high school team until my senior year. That year, I scored two points per game and mostly sat on the bench. So anybody who understands basketball, two points is not a lot. I tell people, Mick, if you play soccer or hockey, score two points a game, you're a legend. But in basketball, you probably need to find something

else to do. So I wanted to play college ball. I knew I was going to go to college, but not necessarily for basketball. Nobody was calling my phone. So I walked on at a Division III college. It was the third tier of college sports. So those of you, again, who are not big sports fans, Division I is the guys you see on TV. So we were down in the basement, Division III. And I played college ball as my game was still developing because, again, I started late.

So I was developing on a later curve than most players. And even though I played, I didn't set the world on fire. And again, you're coming out of a Division III school. It's not like the pro teams are scouting you or knocking down your door for you to play pro. So my first year out of college, and this is graduating in 2004, by the way, I wanted to play professionally, but nobody was checking for me. So I got a couple of quote unquote regular jobs. I worked at Foot Locker as an assistant manager. I worked at a gym called Bally Total Fitness on memberships and Bally's out of business now, but not because of me, Mick. I sold a whole bunch of memberships for Bally in 2005. And then that a year removed from graduating

from college, still wanting to play ball. I went to this event called an exposure camp. You familiar with those? Ever heard of them? Absolutely. Okay. So exposure camps, like a job fair for athletes i went to that you pay to go to these events because these are basically you're paying for an opportunity to maybe impress somebody who can help you further or begin your career so i went to one of those events uh played pretty well and you get two things from going to that event you get a scouting report that was online and you get the footage from the games and i needed that footage because again i played division three college ball So no matter how good you do against those guys, most of them are not pro caliber players. So I needed some footage of me playing against pro level guys. And I got it at that

exposure camp. And then I needed to get me an agent because I knew I was, my future was probably going to be not with the New York Knicks or the LA Lakers, but probably overseas. So I had never been out of the country. So how am I going to get overseas? I don't know anybody. Nobody knows me. So I needed to find an agent and agents in the sports world are just like literary or entertainment agents. They're just the go-between between the jobs and the talent. I was the talent and they knew the jobs. So I went and cold called a bunch of agents because, again, nobody was calling me. I cold called agents to try to find one to represent me. And for those who don't understand the world of sports, Mick, this is backwards. Usually the agents are calling the players because they're like, all right, you're a player who looks like you're going to have a career. So let me represent you. I was calling them and saying, hey, I think I'm going to have a career. So represent me. And I called about 60. I got 20 to respond to me. I sent those 20 my footage. Now this footage was not a link. This is a VHS tape. You remember VHS tapes? Old school. Yes, sir. Yeah. So I had a double-decker VCR at home. So anybody, any millennials listening to this, again, use Google

this, VCR, VHS. And I was making copies of the tapes. So I went to this drugstore called Eckerd, and I don't know if they're even still in business. And I bought like a 10-pack of blank VHS tapes, and I was making copies of the tape, and I would mail it out. And of those 20 who I sent the tape to, one of them got back in touch when I followed up and he said, I'll represent you. That's how I started playing overseas. So that was in Lithuania in 2005, communist Lithuania. Now at the same time, make that footage, again, it was on a VHS tape and I wanted to keep this footage because this is a very important footage that I had, most valuable basketball footage I got. So I took it to an audio visual store and they transferred it onto a data CD. And then I uploaded that to this new website that I

heard of that claimed you can put as much footage up here as you want for free. It was called youtube.com. And that's when I started. So basically I started this parallel career, I guess you could say on the internet, but it wasn't really a career. There was no money to be made from posting content online until about five years later. So fast forward in the story, I'm playing basketball overseas. I've been to, I was in about four or five different places between 2005 and 2010. And about 2009, I found myself unemployed, phones not ringing again as a basketball players. And I asked myself, well, how can I combine playing ball with the internet with making money? Because I am a little bit of a closet internet geek at the same time I'm an athlete. So I just finished reading Tim Ferriss for our

work week. Most people are familiar with that. And I was reading his blog and he said, if you want to, he had a blog post said, if you want to sell products on the internet, here's a simple way to test out a product and actually sell it. I followed his little experiment and I started selling $5 training programs to basketball players who were following me on YouTube. So I basically went through his experiment and I found market viability and I started selling $5 training programs to basketball players who were following me on YouTube. So I basically went through this experiment and I found market viability. And I started making these programs, just little PDFs that were based on the content I was already making. Because I was building this audience of basketball players on YouTube over the years. I left that part out.

So sporadically, I would put videos on YouTube whenever I felt like it. Because again, there's no money to be made from this. But I could see that people were wanting it. An audience was growing in my world through these random videos that I was putting out. These basketball players were not looking for Dre Baldwin. They were just looking for help with basketball. I just happened to be providing it. So once I noticed that, Mick, I started doing it a little bit more consistently. And by about 2009, I had a nice little audience. I had a little content library of material and these players wanted these training programs. So I started selling them again, $4.99 a piece.

And that's when I officially became an entrepreneur. That's how it started, $5 a piece. Luckily the phone rang again and I did keep playing ball till 2015. But when I first started making those first few sales here, Mick, that's when I said to myself, this is what I'm going to be doing for the rest of my life. Because what I had done was create what I now know to be intellectual property. Didn't know that phrase back then, but basically I take an idea out of my head, made it into a tangible thing, put a price tag on it, offered it to the market, and somebody was willing to give me money for it. And I said, okay, I can do this forever. I got a bunch of ideas. I started on only two ideas for five hours a piece, but now I have more ideas and I can put a higher price on it. So that's how I

became an entrepreneur. One more thing that happened in that time, actually two things. One, self-publishing became a thing. I knew I always wanted to write a book, but I didn't want to go through the traditional publisher route because what I had heard was you got to kind of sell them. Same way I had to sell an agent, I would have to sell a literary agent. Didn't want to do it. Eventually did write a book with some traditional publishers, but a lot of my books became through my own company. And then one last piece, the players who are watching me on YouTube started asking me questions about mindset. The reason was because they start to find out a little bit about this background that I just shared. Like you only played one year of high school and you scored two points a game

and then you walked on to play college ball. And then you went and hustled your way into playing pro ball. And here you are in an empty gym in Miami practicing every day because the phone's not ringing yet. You keep going. Who is this guy? What's the mentality behind somebody who would do this? And that's when I started talking about the things that like discipline and confidence and mental toughness. I made this video called the weekly motivation in 2010, because at this point, all my content was basketball related. And I made this one video. I was actually in the gym when I made it. And I said, well, y'all keep asking me about mindset. So how about every week I just make a little short video just talking about mindset. Just a little tip y'all can use. If y'all want this, I'll keep doing it. If you don't, that's cool. We'll just stick to basketball.

And audience said, hey, we want it. Keep going, Dre. Make videos about mindset. So I started doing that weekly motivation every Monday. And Nick, I did those videos for 400 Mondays in a row. And those videos laid the foundation for where we are today because the basketball players said, hey, the way you explain mindset is one part or even better than the way you explain basketball. And people who did not play basketball started hearing those videos or seeing me on YouTube. And they said, well, hey, I don't play basketball, but if you keep talking about this stuff, I'm following you anyway, because I just want that part. So that told me what I could do after sports, because I never wanted to just stay in sports.

I didn't want to become a trainer or a coach. I was looking for my my off ramp from basketball when I get done playing. So in 2010, again, I played till 2015. I already knew what my off ramp was going to be. I'm going to take this mindset stuff and I'm going to figure out how to package that up for people who do not play sports. And that's basically what I've been doing. And it's just another thing since 2015. So that's in a nutshell how we got here. Man, that's amazing. And there's so much that I want to unpack and unplug.

And what I want to start with is that drive that you have. And I'm not saying have because I know you and that drive is still there, right? Yes, sir. And on Make Unplugged, we talk about going deeper than your why and really finding that because, that thing that keeps driving like Dre Baldwin does, right? Dre Baldwin, what's your because? What's your reason that keeps you staying in the grind, that keeps you purposeful, that keeps you trying to help humans become better humans? What's your because? It's a great question. Nobody's ever gone a level deeper than the why. So it's a great question.

And I would say it's because I've always seen myself as what we call now high performer, high achiever. I've always seen myself as that type of person. And I never even considered that I would ever get to a point in my life where I said, okay, I'm content with what I've done and where I'm at. I see myself, I'm going to die out. I'm not going to retire out. I'm always going to keep doing whatever it is that I'm focused on at that time. It was basketball for a while. It could be on the internet. Maybe the internet will go away. You never know. And then it's mindset and it can be business stuff, but I'm always going to be striving for growth and achievement. So I always thought that was just a normal thing. So it's funny because when I started talking about mindset, I didn't think it was

anything that interesting about it. I thought everybody thought like that. But when I started explaining it and people said, I never heard anybody break it down like that. I said, oh, this is, this is different. People don't think this way. I thought everybody thought like this. So it's interesting when just, when you have a level of, I guess we can call it expertise, you kind of devalue it and don't think that other people are like that. But as the course of, as I've grown, I've noticed that a lot of people kind of, they stagnate. They get to a certain point where they're like, not even hear people say it. Like, I'm good where I'm at. If I can just maintain this, I'm good. That thought has never crossed my mind, not once. So I think it's just something that is in me, or maybe I got it in really early childhood and

don't even remember, but I've never even considered an alternative. No, I agree with that completely, man, because I'm the same way. When I started my first business and three years later, I sold it for a big number. I didn't know that it was anything special. I thought that's what everyone did. I thought every business owner, every entrepreneur built a business to scale and to do it as quickly as possible. It wasn't until a few years later that I realized, oh, this is why I was able to sell because I put these things in place that most people do not. And that's just kind of been my thing. So I totally get what you're saying. The second thing that I want to unplug, man, and this is something that's dear

to my heart. And Dre, you and I are about to start some controversy because nobody talks about this. And that's the hustle culture. Yeah. Hustle is great to a certain extent. And then you got to start putting strategy in. Like my analogy is this. Hustle gets you to the door. Strategy keeps you in the room.

That's right. Right. And so what I love about what you've done, man, is that, strategy keeps you in the room. That's right. Right. And so what I love about what you've done, man, is that, yeah, you hustled, but more importantly, you realize at some point, hey, it's actually this actual strategy and execution that turns this grind into revenue, into a true business that makes money for me while I sleep. So I want to talk about the hustle culture a little bit, Dre, and I want to talk about the hustle culture a little bit, Dre, and I want to get your insight on that. One, do you believe it? Do you agree?

And if you disagree, we can have a live debate. But I think we've been taught so much about hustle, hustle, hustle. We forget that there's strategy and execution that has to happen, because if all you're doing is hustling, what you're really doing is burning yourself out. Western society ingrains that in us. Western society is all about the hustle. It's all about the grind. Team no sleep, wake up early, go to bed late, outwork everybody. And if something's not working, clearly you're just not working hard enough, right? That's what we get preached. And you go hear some high performer, high achiever, whether on their show, on social media, or on a stage. They often allude to this, if not outright, say it right to your face.

You're not achieving at a high enough level because you're too lazy or you're not doing enough work or you're not trying hard enough. Look at me and look at you. Obviously, I'm just outworking you. And sometimes the effort is an issue. Let's not act like it's not. Sometimes it is a lack of effort because I come up working with athletes and I knew some athletes who were simply lazy. They would say, Jerry, I want to practice every day like you, but sometimes I don't feel like it. I say, well, don't play basketball. If you want to get good, you got to practice every day. is in the hustle culture mindset, the hustle culture can actually work to a point. There's a ceiling to hustle culture because I was a victim of it. Listen, my whole thing is called work on your game. So I'm never going to tell anybody not to hustle, not to work. But at the same time, I was selling my training programs. I realized it worked. I started making more of them and I was selling more of them and raised the price a little bit and I was selling them,

but I had no strategy, no game plan, no system. I was just make videos, people like me, send them to the link. They bought stuff and it was working until it wasn't working. And so YouTube flipped the algorithm on me and the sales started dropping. I realized, okay, now I have to actually get a business education because I don't have one. I had the right market, the right timing, the right material. I had the skill, I had the talent. And that alone can sometimes end up in, I guess we'll call it lucky success until that luck runs out now what do you do and i had to go get myself an education and really learn how to run a set up a business run a business build a business had to learn those things later on so

the hustle culture thing is something i don't think is ever going to go away because it's wired in a whole lot of people that if things are not working, you obviously just need to put in more effort. Just outwork every problem that you have. And there are successful people who still preach this stuff. That's why I know it's never going to go away. It's not that successful people don't work hard. So I work hard. Mick, I'm sure that you work hard.

But hard work is what I tell people is hard work is an element of success, not the key to success. Exactly. Totally agree, man. And Dre and I are not saying don't work hard. That's not the key to success. Exactly. Totally agree, man. And Dre and I are not saying don't work hard. That's not what we're saying. We're not saying don't hustle, right? That's the emphasis. You got to hustle, right? When you're starting, you have to hustle. And sometimes in the midst of a successful business, you got to hustle. But what we're saying is that's not the limit. That's not the cap. That's not the ceiling. That's literally just the foundation. And then it's strategy. It's expertise.

It's continuing to evolve. That really is what separates good from great. And so I love what you were saying, Dre, because to me, again, we talk so much about hustle, hustle, hustle. But that's not the end result. That's not the end of the story. I tell people, Mick, that hard work or hustle is an element of success the same way that salt, pepper, and oregano are an element of a sandwich. It's good to add it on, but if that's all you have, you don't have a meal, right? You still need the sandwich, which is the game plan, the strategy if you're going to run a business. You can't just work, work, work because you could be working on the wrong thing. So productivity is not the goal because you could produce a whole lot of sweat, but still not be effective. And there's a difference between production and effectiveness.

Effectiveness is getting the right things done. Productive is just getting anything done. And there is a difference. Totally agree. And you're an athlete. So I'm going to say this because I know you heard this probably every day of your career. My least favorite saying is hard work beats talent when talent doesn't show up. My least favorite quote, because what you're saying is work hard, work hard if talent doesn't show up. But what happens when talent does show up, though? And what happens when talent shows up with hard work? Right. Like that's those are the five stars that you see. Right. Those are the those are the Kobe's, the MJ's.

Right. Like it's talent and hard work. And so my least favorite saying, and again, I know you're an athlete, hard work beats talent when talent doesn't show up. And we're forgetting that dot, dot, dot, when talent doesn't show up. That's right. I've actually I've talked about that exact phrase before to my audiences. And I tell them, Hey, if you don't have a lot of talent for basketball, someone who's more talented than you will beat you without working hard because this is better than you and you're in the wrong place. So you got to, one of the things I tell people is you got to be in the right vehicle. So I played baseball, played a little bit of football before I got around to basketball. It doesn't matter how hard I worked at those. I was not going to make it because it was the

wrong vehicle. So you got to be in the right vehicle, then work hard. So again, as you said, you get magic when you combine, you're in the right place that is fitting to your abilities and you put the hard work and effort in. And I'll tell you real quick, the four elements I give you, no hard work, no talent, you get failure. Hard work without talent, then you get mediocrity. Talent without hard work, you're an underachiever.

And then hard work and talent combined, you get magic. So you just pick which one you want to be in. Amen. I love that, bro. So again, we said it in the opener, your content that you started way back then consumed over 103 million times. What do you think resonates most with your audience? Consistency. That's the biggest thing because I've put out content since 2005. I've never had

a single piece of content go viral, not one. So when I say viral, let's say 100,000 views or reads or whatever in a week. I've never had anything go viral. I've created probably 30,000 pieces of content, never had anything go viral, but I never stopped. And the thing is the athletes, I stopped putting on basketball content in 2015. It's 2024. So I get athletes come to me and they'll say, man, I used to watch your basketball videos back in the day when I was in middle school. Now I'm 25. And they're like, man, I wasn't even checking for you because when you stopped making basketball content, they just went and watched some other basketball guys, but now they don't play ball anymore and they came back around to me. There are members of our coaching program right now who used to watch me when they were in high

school for basketball and now they're running businesses and now I'm helping them on other things. So the biggest thing for me that people notice and that people always point out is that you just keep showing up. You're just so consistent at what you do. Now they may have other more detailed reasons why they want to get help or work with me or why they're interested because of a certain subject. But the consistency is probably the thing that I'm most widely, generally, most known for is just this guy just shows up consistently. I love it. I love it. One of your frameworks that I love is called roadmap in reverse. And you do that talking about mindset, strategy, systems, accountability.

Can you explain for the viewers and listeners a little bit about roadmap in reverse? Yeah. So actually, I stole that from one of my coaching members. He was just giving a testimonial. He said, Jerry does a great job of making like a roadmap in reverse. I said, that sounds perfect. I just stole it and started using it. So roadmap in reverse is basically deconstructing your plan, your process from the goal that you want to reach back to where we are today. And the question that you can use in that process, and anyone can use this right now, is just think about your outcome, the goal that you want to achieve in any aspect of your life, and ask yourself, for this to occur, what would have to be true? And then you answer the question, what would have to be true for me to exit and sell my business for

this much money? All right. What would have to be true is I need these things. And you answer the question. Okay. In order for those things to be in place, what would have to be true? And just keep asking yourself the question and what you're going to be doing. You're basically walking backwards, you know, like Michael Jackson, you're moonwalking back to where you are, right? And you keep doing it until you get to the point that you are at today, where the question is what would have to be true? And the answer is how, where you stand today. And you keep doing it until you get to the point that you are at today, where the question is, what had to be true? And the answer is how where you stand today. And then all you do is flip the plan upside down. And that's your roadmap. That's the roadmap in reverse. Now, of course, no plan happens perfectly. As they say, the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry and human beings are imperfect.

So what I tell people is plans are generally useless, but planning is priceless because the time that you spend thinking about how it's going to go, you start to kind of plug holes and you think, OK, that's probably not going to go perfectly. So if that doesn't work, then what can we do? What are other options here? And you put in the most powerful tool in the world, which is the human mind to work. When you take the time to plan, even though the plan, you're probably going to end up throwing it out and replacing it anyway. Amazing. Amazing. I love what you said there. I actually just did a video about this yesterday, focusing on outcomes, right? Because I feel like leaders, entrepreneurs, even everyday individuals, we focus so much on outputs that we forget the outcome. And if we focus on the outcome, you get the right outputs. And here's an example, right? So sales leaders will tell salespeople, oh, well, you need to make 100 calls

a day. For what? Right? If the outcome is to have five successful closes in a month, then just focus on the five closes, right? There's no math. And I know people can make math work in their favor, but there's no real math that says if you make a hundred calls a day and do this many per hour, that this becomes the end result. Just because that worked for one of your salespeople doesn't mean that that's the golden rule for everyone. So I want everyone to quit using a scenario as an example and making that example your framework. And like Dre just said, focus on outcomes because it's not the outputs that are the most important. Right. It's also known as an anecdotal fallacy because it worked for one person.

That means you can use it. And for example, I remember speaking to Tim Ferriss, I mentioned him earlier. He said he used to work at a sales job and he and all the other sales guys would get on the phone from nine to five and bang out the phones. And it wasn't really working. But then he thought, well, I'm trying to reach the leaders. So why don't I make calls from seven to nine and then from five to seven? He was making more sales than everybody because he was just getting, he was calling them when they would answer the phone and the administrator, the admin wasn't there to block and basically block them from getting through. So yes, the 100 calls a day only makes sense if you know, deconstructing your process, that 100 calls leads to generally this outcome. That's the only time it matters. But when you're focused on the outcome, again, the process is based on

how do we get to the outcome. So based on our experience and what we know and our training and our system, that means you got to make this many calls and you should expect to get this kind of answer rate, this kind of conversation rate, this kind of appointment rate, this kind of close rate, but it needs to be based on some actual math, not just I'm doing it to do it. Now you might start that way. I will say this, if you haven't done anything, you're just trying to get some traction. I did that when I was trying to become a professional speaker. I made a lot of calls, a lot of cold calls, a lot of cold emails. But once I started figuring out what worked and what didn't, then I got a little bit smarter. There you go. There you go. Man, I know you're busy. I appreciate

you taking some time, man. I want to get you out of here on a couple of rapid fire questions. So for the entrepreneur listening that's like, I'm stuck, I'm here, but I need to get here. What's two pieces of advice that Dre Baldwin has for that entrepreneur that's stuck in the middle somewhere, but they're trying to get to the top? I'm going to reference a book that I've read about nine times in the last year. It's 10X is Easier than 2X by Dan Sullivan and Ben Hardy. I'm not sure if you're familiar with it. I've read that book so many times because that's like where I'm trying to get to right now is I'm in that season of my life. And the point I'm bringing up is everyone's

familiar with the 80-20 principle. 80% of your results come from 20% of the inputs. Ask yourself, what is the 20% that's actually moving you forward? And if you really think about that and really figure out what it is and decide to narrow down on that, you'll find yourself having to work a lot less hard because a lot of hard work that we do, especially in Western society, is based on our subconscious programming that we have to be working because it's work time, not because it's actually doing anything. So number one is doing 80-20 analysis. And it usually isn't even that hard. The funny thing about it, it's not that hard to figure out what are the inputs that are actually leading to the results. And this is focused on doing that. The challenge is stopping yourself from doing all

the other nonsense is doing nothing. So that's the first thing. The second thing that I would tell that person is get an extra set of eyes, get some fresh eyes on what you are doing, whether that's a colleague in business who's parallel to you, somebody who's doing better than you, or a coach, a mastermind, something where you get a fresh set of eyes on what you're doing so that you can get some, and it needs to be somebody who you respect enough that they can give you some feedback right to your face and you need to be disciplined enough to accept it. So those are two things I would tell them. Awesome. Second question, your favorite college basketball program and why is it the University of North Carolina?

I don't watch college basketball. I don't. So I'll take North Carolina since you mentioned it because I like Michael Jordan, but I didn't watch him. He was playing a little bit. Your favorite pro team then? Favorite pro basketball team? I don't really have one. I'll guess Philadelphia 76ers because I'm from Philly, but I don't really have a favorite team. I just like players, and the players playing today,

not even a big fan of most of them either. I like the talent, but I'm not really a big fan of a lot of players playing today. It's just a different era, different mentality that they have. Totally agree. So what does Dre have going on? Where can people follow you, find you, and what do you have going on next? Because I know you always have something that you're working on. Yes. Our biggest focus now is the university, work on your game, university.com, so you can find out more about that. That's the only place that I offer direct coaching, direct help from

me personally. And the biggest thing I'm working on right now is the same advice that I gave to your audience, that 10X is easier than 2X and really just figuring out, I already had figured it out. I know what the 2X is, not 2X, excuse me, the 10X activities, the 20% that produces 80% of results in our business. I know what it is. And it's offloading and systematizing and passing off all the other stuff, stuff that still needs to be done, just shouldn't be done by me. Because I know what my zone of genius is, doing things like this, and I shouldn't be doing anything else.

So that's what I'm focused on right now. And that's much more of a mental challenge than it is a tactical one. I love it. Ladies and gentlemen, the great Dre Baldwin. Dre, thank you so much for taking some time with the audience today, brother. I thoroughly enjoyed this one.

You know, Mick, I appreciate you sharing your platform. Thank you for the opportunity. Absolutely. And for the listeners, remember. I thoroughly enjoyed this one. Mick, I appreciate you sharing your platform. Thank you for the opportunity. Absolutely. And for the listeners, remember your because is your superpower. Go unleash it. Thank you for tuning in to Mick Unplugged. Keep pushing your limits,

embracing your purpose, and chasing greatness. Until next time, stay unstoppable.